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Minhocão
, , , |Reported=1847 |Researchers=• Fritz Müller • Bernard Heuvelmans • Karl Shuker}} The minhocão (Portuguese: "giant earthworm") was a cryptid reported from regions of , , , and . It was described as a subterranean serpentine creature with hard black scales and horns. There have been no recorded sightings since the 19th Century, and some consider it extinct (if it existed), though Chad Arment suggests that there may be another reason for the sudden stop to sightings. Description The minhocão is regarded as "huge" or "gigantic," and wormlike or serpentine in shape, although its exact dimensions are difficult to gauge based on the sightings. According to some accounts, is reputed to grow up to 150' in length and 15' in width, but witnesses who claimed to have seen the animal - instead of guessing its length based on its furrows - gave different dimensions, including 3' thick but "not very long," and either 82' long or "no longer than a lasso" (i.e. no longer than 80', according to Heuvelmans). The width of the minhocão's furrows are obviously a more reliable gauge of the animal's width than its length, and these tunnels range from 3' to 10' wide. Various accounts collected by Fritz Müller give it black skin, a piglike snout, thick bony armoured scales or plates, and movable horns on its head. The presence of some sort of armour was borne out by a trackway showing traces of scales. No reports mentioned legs, although one eyewitness described it "lumbering". According to Auguste de Saint Hilaire, writing prior to Müller's collection of eyewitness accounts: It is most conspicuous for its tunnelling behaviour, atlhough it is also said to be amphibious, living in water, and in at least one account wallowing in mud. Heuvelmans describes it "overturning trees like blades of grass, shifting the courses of rivers, and turning dry land into fathomless marshes" through its tunnelling. It is mostly active after rainy weather, and overturns boats and eats livestock. Auguste de Saint Hilaire gave several accounts of cattle, horses, and other livestock being pulled beneath the water when fording the Rio dos Piloes and Lakes Padre Aranda and Feia in Goyaz, Brazil: the minhocão was blamed for pulling these animals under. It is also reputed to roar so loudly that it can be heard from several leagues away. Sightings Undated When Emil Odebrecht was surveying the uplands of Santa Catarina in Brazil, his progress was impeded on a swampy plain by a series of winding trenches along the course of a stream. They were too wide to step across, but not too wide that he could not jump them. In the Brazilian state of Parana, a woman going to draw water one morning found the pool destroyed and saw an animal "as a big as a house" crawling away on the ground. She called her neighbours, who arrived too late to see the animal but saw its track, which showed it had passed over a rock and disappeared into deep water. Also in Parana, a young man saw a large pine tree fall over with no visible cause. Hurrying to the tree, he saw the earth moving and glimpsed a huge black wormlike animal either 82' or "no longer than a lasso" (about 80', according to Heuvelmans), which had two moving horns on its head, lying close to its body. It was wallowing in mud. 1849 Whilst travelling near Termas del Arapey in Paraguay, Lebino José dos Santos heard that a minhocão had caught itself in a narrow cleft of rock and died. Its skin was as thick as pine tree bark, and it had scales like an armadillo. One evening in 1849 on the Rio dos Papagaios in Parana, after a long period of rains, João de Deos heard what sounded like rain whilst the sky was clear and sunny. The next morning he discovered that a large piece of land on the other side of a hillock had been completely undermined: deep furrows led to a stony plateau where heaps of reddish-white clay showed the route the animal had taken to a stream which ran into the Papagaios. Three years later, in 1852, Lebino José dos Santos sought out the place and found the tracks still there. He concluded they had been made by two animals which were some 6 to 10 feet thick. circa 1860's In the late 1860's, some 6 miles from the neighbourhood of Lage, Francisco de Amaral Varella and Friedrich Kelling observed a gigantic animal, some 3' thick, but not very long, with a pig-like snout; Amaral was unable to tell if the animal had feet. Amaral called his neighbours, but when they arrived the beast "lumbered" off clumsily, leaving a trail of deep furrows about 3' wide in its wake, until it disappeared into the ground. A few weeks later a similar trench, possibly made by the same animal, was found nearly 4 miles away, on the opposite side of Lage. A party of locals followed the track, which led under the roots of a large pine tree before becoming lost in swampy ground. 1863 In 1863 a "giant snake" or "sierpe" (serpent) settled in a place called La Cuchilla near Concordia in . A mound of earth appeared at the foot of a hill for no apparent reason, and a trusting peasant planted some fruit trees on it, but the ground collapse, laying bare a huge rock. Trees were uprooted and rocks were thrown up, blocking the road between Chichiguas and San Rafael del Norte. 1864 In January 1864, Antonio José Branco, who lived on a tributary of the Rio dos Cacharros 6 miles from Curitibanos, came home after an absence of eight days to find the nearby road completely undermined, huge heaps of earth thrown up, and a grooved track 10' wide and about half a mile long, terminating in a swamp. The tunneling had completely changed the course of a stream, and several pine trees had been knocked down. The track was still visible in 1877, and attracted hundreds of people. 1868 In February 1868, during a journey to Concordia, Paulino Montenegro heard that of the "giant snake" in La Cuchilla, and, investigating with some friends, saw tracks which convinced him of the existence of "some large animal". The most recent of these was only three days old, and revealed that there had been two animals, and that one had crashed into an oak tree and then retreated. One had tunnelled into a pool, whilst the other had dug across stony ground, then gone into the same pool. From the imprints left in the mud Montenegro guessed that the animals had scales, and were about 40' long (though Heuvelmans notes that it is not possible to judge an animals length from a tunnel), 10' high, and 5' wide. 1899 According to an 1899 newspaper report, an American soldier in wrote to his family claiming that a Cuban scout had told him about a scaly, 3' wide, hog-snouted burrowing animal which lived near watercourses in the jungly mountains in the east of the island. Given the lack of any other information about the minhocão in Cuba, Chad Arment regards this story as a newspaper concoction based on Müller's reports. circa 1900's to 1920's Bernard Heuvelmans believed that Percy Fawcett may have been referring to the minhocão when he wrote "they talk here of another river monster - fish or beaver - which can in a single night tear out a huge section of river bank. The Indians report the tracks of some gigantic animal in the swamps bordering the river, but allege that it has never been seen".Fawcett, Brian & Fawcett, Percy (1953) Exploration Fawcett If so, this is the latest recorded report of the minhocão - at least forty years after the last apparent sighting - and suggests that stories regarding it were still current in the first years of the 20th Century. Theories Folklore It has been thought that the minhocão is a fictional creature invented to explain otherwise-mysterious earthquake damage, and Charles Darwin suggested that its appearance could have been inspired by discoveries of fossilised bones.Arment, Chad "Notes on the Minhocão," BioFortean Review: 2007 strangeark.com 6 June 2019 However, as Karl Shuker notes, this could not explain actual sightings of the animal, and Chad Arment points out that the minhocão's disappearance and apparent extinction provides an obstacle for this theory, asking: "the minhocão is purely imaginary and represents improbable explanations for unusual natural occurrences, what now stands in for the Minhocão as an explanation? Why does it not continue to be used in an explanatory manner within the folklore of that region?". Lungfish Many of the first scientists to write on the minhocão, in the 19th Century, believed it may have been a new species of lungfish, which Karl Shuker notes have somewhat piglike snouts. Shuker also writes that prehistoric lungfishes had scales, and during the dry season, African lungfishes cocoon themselves and lie buried in mud until the rainy season comes again, bringing to mind the minhocão's habit of activity during the rains. Caecilian Shuker first proposed the theory that the minhocão may be a large species of caecilian, limbless burrowing amphibians closely resembling earthworms except for the visible mouth, and a pair of sensory tentacles on their head that resemble horns or ears when protruded, conforming to the description given by Saint Hilaire. Although they seem smooth, they do possess small scales. They also usually come above ground after heavy rainstorms, and are predators, grabbing their prey from below. Heuvelmans eventually abandoned the glyptodont theory to support Shuker's caecilian theory.Shuker, Karl P. N. ShukerNature: SEEKING MEGA-CAECILIANS karlshuker.blogspot.com 6 June 2019 Glyptodont or pampathere .]] Bernard Heuvelmans, supporting a theory initially proposed in the 1860's and later by Emil Budde, suggested that the minhocão may have been a surviving glyptodont, which he supposed to be a burrowing animal. Karl Shuker was sceptical of this theory, noting that a glyptodont could never be described as "serpentine" or "wormlike". There is also no evidence that these animals were burrowing, and there is no reason to assume they would need to be, with their heavy armour. However, Dale A. Drinnon notes that gopher tortoises, which have similarly domed shells, are burrowing animals. Given the objections mentioned above, a similar but alternative theory regarding the minhocão is that it may be a living pampathere. These giant armadillos resembled glyptodonts, but were somewhat more elongated, and had banded plates on their midsections, allowing them some degree of flexibility, so they may have borne more resemblance to the minhocão than a glyptodont. Similar cryptids Do you think the exists? If so, what do you think the is? Myth, folklore, hoax, or otherwise made-up Giant lungfish Giant caecilian Glyptodont Pampathere Heuvelmans suggested that the minhocão may sometimes have been confused with giant anacondas and the sucuriju gigante. Arnošt Vašíček connects the minhocão with the sachamama, a shelled "snake" reported from Peru.Vašíček, Arnošt (1996) Planeta záhad Notes and references Category:Cryptids Category:South America Category:Central America Category:Bolivia Category:Brazil Category:Nicaragua Category:Uruguay Category:Giant serpents Category:Theory: Mistaken identity Category:Theory: New species Category:Theory: Living fossil - Glyptodont Category:Theory: Living fossil - Pampathere Category:Historical - Modern Category:No recent sightings